


punches is thrown until you're frontless

by meios



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Fight Club, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Drugs, M/M, Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 06:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8091547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: They do this weekly, or more, honestly; as often as they need, until it’s not the only thing they need, until they can swallow down their coffee black and grit their teeth until the next fix comes in, crawl back down Crime Alley from their bus stops and do it all again in the morning.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).



> This story's song is Blockbuster Night, Part 1 by Run the Jewels.  
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWQyfGa1yI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWQyfGa1yI/)

The music pounds against the walls like prisoners, deep voices rapping over rough beats, muttering about caskets and police and all of Gotham would be in euphoria if they would just listen to the words, to the way that skin slaps against itself as shirts are shed, knuckles rapped—they gather like an army, a small circle in the center. There’s a bare lightbulb above him and he taps it with his index finger. He’s got a tattoo across the center of his chest, stretching up to his neck where it ends with an outspread of wings, harsh talons. _Birdbones_ , it reads, and there’s a scab underneath it, remnant of a cut that might’ve needed stitches once upon a time, but now it simply curls around his rib, slicing into a bushel of flowers with their roots still attached, graveyard blooms, black and white and brown.

 

He cracks his neck and the other boy across from him does the same. The song hits a repeat: this is their dance number for the night, and at the drop, they both step forward, toes on cold concrete, and he’s swinging right while the other boy goes left, hits him in the ear and he’s never been so glad to have taken the stone plugs from his lobes as he is now. His fist opens and he’s gripping hair, pulling down until the boy—light brown skin and eyes bluer than the sky, pupils like dinner plates—meets his knee. Body threatens to hit the floor, and there’s the slap of skin on bone, but the boy rolls with it, and the boy’s name— _Dick—_ falls from his lips.

 

Dick hits him with an uppercut that spurts blood into his mouth, sprays through his teeth and lands back on his own face. Kicks from the floor to set some distance between them, and he’s thrown back into the crowd that only pushes him back as if he’s disgusting. There’s some whooping in the background, beneath the rush in his inner ears, tunnel vision until all he sees is Dick, and he’s grinning crimson, cracks his neck again.

 

He meets Dick in the middle, and where Dick has flexibility and speed, he makes up for it in size and how heavy he hits. An elbow sends him to the floor, scrapes and bruises on Dick’s forearms already beginning to appear, and a foot to his face is the price he pays for the hormones that overcome him for that breadth of a blink. The crowd parts so as to let him hit the wall, where he likes it, where he can dodge and weave as Dick tries to hit him again, knowing and not knowing, licking like fire until he catches Dick’s fist and tugs him forward, headbutts him and lets him fall.

 

But Dick grips him by the front of his neck, pulls him down and slams his face into the floor. He can feel the broken nose before the blood mixes with his mouth-blood, spit stretching and bridging as he looks up, rolls out of the way of the next fist, roars as he sits up and swears, tackles Dick back to the floor to pin him, to punch him squarely in the face.

 

A tooth is stuck in his knuckles when he reels back, ready to do it again, breath hard and heavy, and the next punch is a miss. Dick bucks him off, sends him somersaulting back to the circle. Dick scrambles back up, blows his hair out of his face as he does so, and he looks beautiful, ravenous: like something to be treasured and destroyed and rebirthed, and when they meet again, every throw is synchronized, every single kick and punch and shout is reverberated, and the song is two minutes long, but it’s enough for them to hear it four times before he’s catching Dick’s forearm and breathing, “Uncle,” and Dick’s pulling him in without a word, like the other thousand times they’ve done this, and someone—Carrie, he thinks, vaguely aware of the glint of glasses—is handing them the first aid kit, and they’re disappearing into the corner, bandaging each other as the next fight is set up.

 

They do this weekly, or more, honestly; as often as they need, until it’s not the only thing they need, until they can swallow down their coffee black and grit their teeth until the next fix comes in, crawl back down Crime Alley from their bus stops and do it all again in the morning, and as the ice pack is placed upon his aching jaw, he’s glancing up at Dick, swollen eyes and bleeding gums and pretty smile and all.

 

“You look like shit, Jaybird,” says Dick, soft laughter in his voice.

 

Jason snorts, “You’re missin’ a canine.”

 

“Nah.” He cradles Jason’s hand, plucks the offending tooth and leans down to lap at the wound, tongue mint-cool and fresh, wet, and there’s the smallest mewling sound that escapes Jason’s throat. “I’ll make a necklace outta it.”

 

“Regular Jo-Ann over here.”

 

But there’s a kiss waiting for him where two minutes earlier, there’d been a fist, and it hurts worse than any hit could, agonizingly slow and all teeth, all copper and mint, and when Dick draws back, Jason takes the ice pack away, guides it to the other boy’s eye. There’s a Band-Aid on his chin, at least ten on each forearm. Later, he’ll kiss every single one.

 

And from the darkness, they emerge, take their places in the circle as a Chinese girl—Cassandra: bright and beautiful, ruthless and talented—bites down on her opponent’s incoming fist, watch as it splays into an open palm as the skin breaks, and the white boy—Tim, face drawn and taut and he needs to eat more, stop wasting his breaks doing coke with Duke and that one redheaded girl that comes ’round every so often, whose name he can’t recall—cries out. He’s spinning, though, wrapping his thighs around Cassandra’s face to wring his hand free, send them both to the ground. Jason catches the small intake of breath that Dick draws, and he smirks, digs into the front pocket of his jeans to find a half-squished pack of Marlboros, sticks one in his mouth and sucks in smoke when Dick lights it with the Bic he magically produced.

 

Later, he’s breathing that smoke out into Dick’s mouth as he’s pressed down into the backseat of Dick’s car, as they’re pulled apart and made naked in every sense of the word, careful of new wounds and healing ones, and they become one and two and one again, and every hurried thrust is a promise for another hit, another landed kick, another broken bottle to be used to cut between the ink on their arms. And Jason calls the both of them scum, but Dick just laughs like a whistle through his teeth, says that everyone is scum, but there are always going to be people lower than them.

 

That they may be the scum on the upper class’ shoes, but at least they still get attention. At least Dick can still make amazing, shitty, brilliant coffee in the Business District of Gotham, and at least he can still do this; that they can break and put themselves back together is more than any CEO that steps on them.

 

“We’re more powerful than them,” whispers Jason after they’re done, righting himself beneath Dick. His face is pressed to the bird tattoo on his neck, and there’s a hum of agreement. “We’re actually alive.”

 

“How d’you know?”

 

“I’ve died once, Dickie.”

 

“So you remind me every other day.”

 

“This?” Jason continues, ignoring him, silently tugging Dick’s hair so as to coax him to look up. And when he does, Jason is grinning, eyes glistening, stars in swollen night skies, all darkness and madness and his teeth are still stained red, all cannibalism and axe murderers. “With you? With them? It’s living.”

 

Dick laughs, kisses him as they sit up, move to the front of the car, struggling over the center console, but Dick starts the car and the darkness of Gotham is lost upon them, the blackness in Jason’s gaze exploding into pupils and irises and corneas. The old thing coughs to life, engine threatening to give, but trucking along as much as possible. Finally, Dick says, “You’re too sappy to have a black eye.”

 

“Asshole.”

 

“I am what I eat.”


End file.
